The Rorschach Napster

Wikipedia has published the images used in the Rorschach test.

Today's New York Times asks the question, "Has Wikipedia created a Rorschach cheat sheet?" That's a question?

How about looking to Hippocrates: "First, do no harm?"

What harm? Read everything you can get your hands on about Kenneth Bianchi, the Hillside Strangler. He was a fairly high-IQ serial killer who studied psychological literature, and nearly succeeded in passing himself off as a case of multiple personality disorder. At the extremes, publishing the Rorschach images provides a recipe for sociopaths to buy time by figuring out how to look normal--not to mention the confounding effect it'll have for therapists and researchers who want to use the test in the normal ranges of the psychological spectra.

Publishing the images destroys their ability to elicit a candid, unstudied response. Therein lies their SOLE benefit. Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder) should have been smart enough to figure that out, and to take a stand on this example against the vortex of the Internet, which sucks everything inward and downward.

Much of psychological testing relies on the ability to elicit norms and variances. To do that, you need back-comparability between those who take the instrument now vs earlier. If that's destroyed, value is lost. No two ways about it.

Oh, I forgot. There's always the lowest-common-denominator argument that made tabloids out of the great newspapers: "If I don't do it, somebody with lower ethics will."

So what. Take a stand. Give it a try. Oops, too late.

Geronimo's bio

He didn't have a nom de plume in mind back then when he swiped the top sheet from his grandmother's linen closet, climbed up on the roof of the old carriage house out back, let out an eponymous yell, and jumped from the gable assuming that the parachute effect he would achieve by grasping the top sheet by the corners would deposit him gently onto the gravel drive below with a glorious flourish that would impress Betty, the soon to be voluptuous thirteen-year-old girl next door more even than his skill with a slingshot, but then he was only eleven and didn't know any better and so instead he simply plummeted, landing hard and awkwardly and fracturing both an ankle and a collarbone and creating a hubbub that abruptly interrupted the chirruping of the two dozen or so blue-haired ladies playing canasta and swatting flies around folding card-tables in the back yard who were there for the annual garden party of their local chapter of the HDU (Home Demonstration Unit).

They called him Geronimo ever after.

Maher slags profit, sets off Larned Jetmore again

Geronimo says: Here's another jolt of adrenalin from the author of the Cronkite chronicle, which was post #1. As with the first post, if you're still interested in what Maher had to say by the time you finish Mr. Jetmore's disquisition, you'll find a link at the bottom.

Larned Jetmore said:

"His overall point is good -- greed is bad. (See URL below) Of course it is. But I won't begin to go into why his examples in many cases don't even begin to support his premise, and in fact misunderstand and distort how profit-seeking contractors actually reduce the cost of the public services he talks about.

Or maybe I will.

Yes government often contracts with private, profit-earning business to take over some of the services of government. And in many cases, it is very easy to prove that the services cost less than if the government did the same thing itself. In the end that is a net savings to taxpayers and to the public.

I'm not making this up. This is precisely why the government has chosen to pay these contractors to do some of this work. It's the ONLY reason.

My problem with Bill Maher is that as likable and smart and good-hearted and charming as he is, he often doesn't know what he's talking about. His intentions are good, and his world-view is admirable, and his morals are much purer than many of the people and institutions that he criticizes. He's a good guy. But sometimes he overgeneralizes to the point of misleading people. This essay is a good example of that.

There are many, many, many instances in which profit-earning contractors do a better job than government ever could. Not because they are cut-throat, sleazy, con artists, but because they are more efficient and knowledgeable and experienced providers of the services. For every Halliburton in Iraq, there is an ambulance service or a janitorial company or an IT consulting firm or a truck fleet management company or a graphic arts company or an architectural firm that can do what it does far better and cheaper than the government can, and still make a profit for itself.

Don't fall for this cheap logic that profit is somehow evil. Maher shouldn't either. What is offensive about The American Greed Machine is the focus on short-term profits when no real service is rendered. The banks and Wall Street financiers, who are absolutely instrumental in keeping the larger economy moving, strip far more profit from facilitating deal-making that underwrites keeping America in business, than any of the "contractors" Maher criticizes, who actually provide a physical product or a specific service to fulfill a governmental obligation. At least they are providing the service or product, and we are paying their tax-paying employees to do what they are good at, rather than paying the government itself, which would have to recreate the same institutional capability at higher cost, to do the same thing.

Greed is bad. No question. Profit, however, isn't necessarily bad. What would you do if you couldn't mark up the cost of the beautiful art objects you find for your customers, as payment for the long hours you spent finding them and recognizing their particular aesthetic value for your very picky client? Profit, in its purest form, is recognition of value delivered. It doesn't cost me a specific amount of money to write 1,000 beautiful and meaningful words. I am paid for the quality of those words that I create out of my imagination and my knowledge and a little thin air to fulfill the requirements of someone who contracts with me. Am I evil for wanting to be paid for my creativity as well as my time? That is basically profit. So is my profit tainted? Of course not. And neither is yours.

Larned Jetmore

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-not-everything-i_b_244050.html

Larned Jetmore, forever young

Larned Jetmore's visa photo

Cronkite

This is Larned Jetmore's response to a Salon post titled Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did. Start with this, then if you still want to see what prompted it, there’s a link at the bottom. Here it is…

"My one comment about this article is that the notion of journalistic objectivity and neutrality is a crock. The best one can do as a journalist is strive to be fair, and give each side their say. But there's no reason in the world not to come down on one side or another if the evidence appears to warrant it. You do your reporting and try your best to make a judgment that is supported by what you find. If your conclusion is debatable, you say so, or else you simply don't draw a conclusion.

Television journalism is a different animal. Oftentimes the "reporting" isn't even done by the on-camera performer. In these days of 24/7 news, more and more of what we see is simply extemporaneous commentary. Very frequently they say nothing more than the obvious, or what has been spoon fed them either by their own editorial staffs or by their "sources." David Gregory's pompously self-effacing comment at the beginning of this article acknowledges none of this.

In the case of Cronkite, he liked to call himself a reporter, but in reality he was more of an editor. He decided what went on the news each night, and did a final rewrite to suit his aesthetic sense of good writing that could be delivered well verbally. Occasionally, at the end of the newscast, he would perform the equivalent of an editorial, which by definition is a formally articulated opinion based on his own editorial judgment. The irony is that on-camera "reporters" do this all the time when they try to sum up what it is they are "covering." Again, there's no avoiding this, but in a live medium like TV, spontaneous analysis isn't always fully informed, so it can't possibly be considered "fair." And unlike in the newspapers, where editorial commentary is mainly segregated into the op/ed pages, it creeps into news performances in ways that blur the distinction between news and opinion. That's why you can't stand Fox News, and why conservatives can't stand MSNBC.

Cronkite was also an "anchorman" during ongoing news events with historic significance. His job was to provide informed continuity on the fly, as unpredictable events unfolded and unrehearsed reports from the field came in. Again, that role is really more like being an editor, and editors have to make judgments and decisions all the time about what warrants attention and what isn't up to snuff.

The difference between Cronkite and today's anchors and news presenters is that he grew up working for newspapers and actually knew how to be a self-contained journalist who reported on events and then wrote the stories himself. He moved on to radio and found he had a good voice for the medium, but first and foremost, he was still a traditional journalist. Even by the time he got to television, he wasn't primarily a performer, per se, but instead rose to prominence because his editorial judgment was so sound. He also happened to have a reassuring camera presence thanks to his self-effacing Midwestern demeanor, and as he aged he acquired a certain gravitas that we haven't seen since. (Brian Williams' stentorian, baritone bloviation is the epitome of the pseudo-gravitas of today's news "talent.")

So while I agree with this article in general, I think it's useful to remember that "journalism" is a many-faceted profession, and that in different media it takes on special characteristics. What works in print doesn't necessarily work on the air. You can't really expect seat-of-the-pants television reports of breaking news to be deeply researched or even fair. There's simply not time for the preparation that requires, nor can the delivery always reflect a deep understanding of something that is unfolding before everyone's eyes.

I suppose the interview programs offer the greatest opportunity to practice pure journalism on television, because they basically depict the reporting process itself. But for that very reason, they are unpredictable, and usually one-sided, and happen only if the subject willingly agrees to participate. In this era of celebrity worship, you end up with two celebrities talking to each other, and in many cases each of them is more concerned with maintaining and buffing their own images than in deeply exploring ideas or uncovering something previously unknown. It's a performance, because it's all there to be seen. The best journalism, however, usually is the result of private discussions in which "sources" can be more open about what they say and in which trust between the reporter and the subject plays a role. Shows like 60 Minutes and Frontline and 20/20 are the best examples of this in television.

Journalism is a craft, not an art and not a religious calling and not a civic duty. We are blessed in this country with a tradition of journalism as "the fourth estate" -- the one that keeps the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of our government honest and responsible, among other things. The Constitution guarantees the right of journalistic entities to practice without interference by the government, as long as those entities don't abuse the rights of others. That's why the journalist's highest responsibility is to be fair. Very few activities or rights are explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution, but this is one of them, along with freedom of speech. So journalism has a special status, and thus special responsibility.

But it is practiced by human beings who are fallible, and who can't help but have biases and opinions that others might challenge. It tries to shine the light on nefarious activities and to also explain how our world works, and it often comes up short because not everything can be fully understood. It can be entertaining, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But it is what it is. Forget objectivity. The best we can ask for is that journalists be fair-minded and try to exert at least as much energy to understand what they disagree with as they spend trying to buttress what they believe to be true. Only then can they be considered credible."

Larned Jetmore

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/18/cronkite/index.html

Larned Jetmore's bio

By not trying to fool you, Larned Jetmore may do just that. He is the grandson of a fictional character in a Kurt Vonnegut novel, but is estranged from both his fictional grandfather and the author who created him. It’s too late to patch things up with Vonnegut, which seems to have taught Jetmore a lesson. Last week he wrote a nice letter to his granddad. Then he bragged about it.

Geronimo